Justice (19 page)

But Len hadn't been drinking whiskey all those years without learning something about its uses and its power. He had one more drink, as quick and raw as he could take it. Then he put two fingers to his closed eyes and pressed hard, harder. In another moment both thought and inner sight served this new pain. If his swirling head and stomach seemed up to making the trip, he would head for the bedroom. Many nights he didn't try and fell asleep in his chair.

Yet no matter how much whiskey he drank, no matter where he slept, he was always awake in time to watch Gail Hayden walk across the street from her house to the courthouse.

Len McAuley was not the only man who found Wesley Hayden's wife attractive. In the late spring an oilman came to Bentrock, up from Missouri or Mississippi, Len couldn't remember which. One of those southern states where people talked too much, and then made it worse by drawling out their words as if their mouths were for nothing but making noise.

This oil speculator, Gilbert Bennett, was a cocky little man who wore two-tone shoes and suits the color of Montana rock——pale gray granite or sandstone. He was supposed to be
in the area to buy mineral rights, but as far as Len could see, the man didn't do much more than shake dice at the Silver Dollar Bar and flirt with the secretaries and the waitresses at the hotel dining room.

And of those women he singled out Gail Hayden to receive most of his attention. “Sunshine,” he called her, saying that her smile was the only ray of sunshine in that Godforsaken part of the country. Gail blushed at the remark, and Len wondered if he should tell her he heard Bennett say the same damn thing to Mary Morrissey.

At first, Bennett was content to compliment Gail, and even then his flattery was directed at her character more than her appearance. Gradually, he became more personal. “Can you cook too? My God, what more could a man ask for—not only is she a beauty but she brings home a paycheck and puts food on the table.” When Bennett saw Gail eating a piece of apple cake one morning, he rushed over to her table and pretended to pull the cake away from her. “Let's have none of this now. I don't want you eating anything that's going to ruin that pretty little figure.” When he caught her staring out the window, he said, “I know, I know—there's not much to interest someone like you up in this corner of the world, is there? What say you leave that husband of yours and you and me will go off and find some excitement. God! there's no sadder sight than a beautiful woman bored.”

After Bennett made a remark like this, he laughed his highpitched little laugh. Gail Hayden blushed and managed a tight smile, but Len thought there was more discomfort than mirth in her eyes.

Len finally decided he should speak to the sheriff about Bennett.

“What do you think of that southerner?” Len asked Wesley one afternoon in the office while they were catching up on paperwork. Len had long known that the best way to give Wesley advice about his work was by circling around and coming in the back door. “He sure don't fit in around here, if you ask me.”

“He's a character all right.”

“I noticed he's mighty familiar around the women.”

“For a little fellow he's got a lot of strut in him. I don't know where he gets it.”

“Wherever. He's got his share and then some.”

Wesley turned to his typewriter, rolled in a sheet of paper, and began to type, his index fingers tapping out words in sudden little bursts of speed. Len waited until Wesley paused. “Gail too.”

Wesley kept his fingers on the keys. “What about Gail?”

“Like I say. The way he gets familiar.”

“Is he bothering her, would you say?”

“Embarrassing her, more like.”

Wesley nodded. “It's no secret when that happens. I don't know anybody gets as red.” He resumed typing.

Len stood and walked around the office, staying close to the walls like a dog that has been scolded but still wants its master's attention. He stopped directly behind Wesley. “Maybe I should say something to him.”

“About what?”

“His behavior around the ladies.”

Wesley backed up the paper in the typewriter and leaned toward the sheet as if the answer to Len's question was printed there. “They're grown-up Montana women. They can take care of themselves. Gail too. Besides, what are you going to say to him? He hasn't broken any law.”

Len stared at Wesley for a moment as he concentrated on aligning the paper in the machine. Neither Len nor Wesley smoked, but the basement office still smelled of the cigars Wesley's father smoked. Wesley's father—Len couldn't imagine that Julian Hayden would be hunched over a typewriter while Bennett—or
anyone
—was flirting with Bentrock's married women, much less his own daugher-in-law. He'd take that fellow aside and explain how things worked around here, how he'd best watch what he said to women who weren't free for his picking. If you're looking for that, you don't look in the direction of women who were already spoken for. Try that with some of the squaws from the reservation. Or some of the Russian farm girls. Or drive across the border to North Dakota and see if they like that kind of talk over there. Wesley's father wouldn't threaten Bennett. He wouldn't say, you stop this or else. He'd just explain. And Bennett would understand.

But Weslev wasn't his father.

As Len walked out of the office he heard the zzzst of a sheet of paper being pulled violently from the typewriter. He wasn't much of a typist either.

Then Len heard something, and he decided, no matter what Wesley said, no matter what the law read, Bennett had to be dealt with.

It happened on a Tuesday afternoon, again in the hotel coffee shop. Gail Hayden was there, sitting at a table with two other women who worked in the courthouse. The women finished their lunches, rose from the table, and began to walk toward the stairs. Gail stayed a moment longer at the table, drinking the last of her coffee and counting out a few coins for the waitress.

When she walked out, with that wobbling gait of hers, she went past Bennett and three other men who stood at the bar looking at a topographical map of their corner of Montana. The map was weighted down at each corner with a coffee cup. Bennett was explaining what the rises, dips, hills, and folds in the region might mean in terms of possible oil deposits. Then Gail passed, and Bennett stopped talking and watched her. He even leaned back from the bar so he could keep his eyes attached to her until she was completely out of sight. Then he turned to the other men and said, “But I can tell you where I'd like to drill.”

Len was also standing at the bar, close enough to see and hear everything. After Bennett made this remark, Len paid very close attention to how the three men reacted. They all laughed, and Len silently recited their names to himself—Lyle Branch, Ray Hollister, Carl McCarty—committing them to memory and vowing that these men would meet with trouble at some future date.

Punishment in some indefinite future, however, would
not do for Bennett. That man needed to be stopped, before he said one more word, made one more gesture that would degrade a Bentrock woman.

Len considered walking over to Bennett right at that moment, accusing him of being the kind of trash that was not wanted in the community, and knocking him to the floor.

But that wouldn't do much more than make Len look like a bully, an unreasonable man abusing a stranger—and a man who could bring some economic good to their region at that. More likely, people would say—Len, drunk at noon and striking that oilman. And he's a law enforcement officer?

Len waited two days, until Thursday, the night when the weekly poker game was played in the garage of Sam Hench's Studebaker dealership. The game was not secret; in fact, on warm nights they left the heavy wooden garage doors open, and anyone who walked by the establishment late at night could look in and see six or seven men sitting under a wirecovered work light, the fog of tobacco smoke keeping the mosquitoes away. The garage had become the regular site for the game because it was always available, because the players could dump their ashes and crush out their smokes right on the oil-stained concrete floor, and because it was right across the street from Staples' Bar——On and Off Sale. Sam Hench threw a heavy canvas tarp over a table brought out from the showroom, the players pulled up mismatched chairs and stools, the chips, stamped with the letters B.P.O.E. because
they once belonged to an Elks Club in another city, were allotted, and the cards were dealt.

Len himself played a few years back, but he soon quit. If he drank during the game he lost money; he couldn't keep track of the cards or the betting. If he didn't drink, the frustration of being in the presence of liquor but not imbibing made it difficult for him to concentrate and he lost anyway. Nevertheless Len knew who was in the game, and from the first week Bennett came to town, he had been sitting in.

Shortly after eleven o'clock, the hour when Bentrock's streets were generally empty and its houses dark, but when the poker game was still in its early stages, Len entered the Northern Pacific Hotel. He did not go in through the heavy glass door that opened on the lobby. He climbed the fire escape and crawled through an unlatched window at the south end of the second floor.

Len remained right by the window, at the darkened end of the hall, close to a set of floor-length curtains he could step behind if it became necessary. From there Len could see the length of the hall, all the way to Room 202, the room that Bennett occupied. The night was warm, and no air moved in the hallway, but Len did not remove his coat. The pistol rested heavily in the coat's right-hand pocket, and he did not want to separate himself from it.

While he waited, Len let his thoughts rest on Gail Hayden. He was a realistic man; he knew that such a clear-eyed, lovely young woman was not likely to regard him as anything but what he was—a hawk-faced, stoop-shouldered drunk, old enough to be her father. That was all right. Even in his
untethered dreams he came no closer than a father. He liked to imagine her walking down a street, day or night, and he kept pace with her, staying just a yard or two behind. Occasionally she would look back and smile, content that he was there to protect her. He was not well traveled; he had never been further from Montana's borders than North Dakota, but he played out his little scene in different locations. He knew San Francisco was famous for its hilly streets, so he imagined the two of them walking up and down those steep grades. Daisy had once visited a cousin in Salt Lake City, and she brought back a postcard of the Great Salt Lake, which she had waded in. Len thought of Gail walking along that beach, with his footsteps denting the sand right behind hers. He wanted to travel even farther with this fantasy—to England or France perhaps—but he didn't know what their streets or countryside looked like, so he couldn't allow Gail to go there.